


Cover Your Eyes

by BeautifullyLovely



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 19:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifullyLovely/pseuds/BeautifullyLovely
Summary: It's like they're trying to catch each other, hands glancing off hands, gazes glancing off other things--but it's more of a game than anything else.





	

Magnus looks up, eyeliner a cutting jab above the iris, and there’s that feeling again: caught. “How far down does your mental list go?” 

Alec could play dumb. A half-hearted question stands at attention, poking at the seams of lips, but he doesn't move. He wants Magnus to know he’s smarter than that. That he knows Magnus is smarter, too. 

“Is muscled-brunette number one on your hottest in the office head tally?” 

Alec lets out a small stream of air. The heat in his cheeks isn't embarrassment, but a shock of something else. They can't know. They can't. But they do, because Alec showed them, Magnus’ mouth a crash against his. Ok. It's alright. 

“No.” It’s alright. 

“Oh,” Magnus swings. His legs unfurl, boot buckles clinking; he shifts from casual slouch to carefree attention, so smooth. He has a real grace, to be able to move like that. “Tell me. What number, then?” 

Tell me your first wet dream, your secret crush, that thing you didn't think you’d ever get to do, the way you most want to fuck. This is Alec’s life now, staring at him from across the table. 

He could tell Magnus. He has told Magnus lots things. Things you can't tell your family because they shouldn't know, the sound you make when you’re close to coming. 

Magnus is smiling, hair a neat fall over the temple. His nails tap out a silent signal: play with me. 

“No.” 

The tapping halts. The eyeliner curves into surprise. Alec’s chest jumps, and he wants to die. Shit. It’s the best feeling. 

“OK then,” He drags it out, like he’s trying to catch something. Alec refuses to be caught. 

Magnus’ eyes slide into crescent shape. It’s the kind of look only lovers get, who know how to create games between them. Try me. Alec hasn't seen it before. Hasn't dared to see it. 

He swears on the rune coiling the spine of his back--courage--that he’ll see it again. And again. And again. 

And again.

\---

Magnus is curious. 

He is lightly scraping at Alec’s sides, trying to prod him into the light. But Alec has his training. He can be immovable, if he wants. 

“Will you tell me?” He asks. 

“Maybe.” 

“When will you tell me?” 

“I haven't decided.” 

“So you will tell me?” Magnus is a terrible person. He is smart in a different way than shadowhunters are smart. He places traps with words. 

Alec blinks. It feels like defeat. 

At the loft, Magnus turns to open the door. The hair at his head runs into skin. It is average. It is mundane. It is a black river that washes onto sand. 

Is it salty? Can Alec make it salty if it isn't already?

Magnus moves, face in elegant profile. Eyes meet: caught. The both of them.

\---

Alec’s lips draw lines on skin. Magnus tastes like the sea. 

They are in the loft. Alec can't remember. Did Magnus invite him inside? Did he invite himself?

“Tell me.” 

“No.” 

They breath. The words repeat. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. 

Alec gets on his knees, and Magnus hooks a leg over, soft but firm. Heel digs into spine. 

Courage.

Alec opens his mouth, and opens his mouth, and Magnus doesn't ask anymore. 

\---

They are in bed in the loft.

It is not the same night as Magnus’ eyes waned into crescents, but it smells like old books and silk sheets and the undefinable tell of two bodies that have been mashed together. 

They do this a lot now. It is no longer revolutionary. 

Alec bends to pick up his pants. He has a hunt at six. Magnus had set the alarm before he let Alec touch him. 

“Hey.” A hand glides over, pins itself in place on Alec’s back. Chest hits mattress, an awkward slide. “Tell me now?” 

Alec’s hand opens involuntarily, and the pants fall back to the floor. He would be docked for that, a red lash next to his name in training. Mom would glower. Alec would punch something pre-approved to be punched.

He doesn't care. Perfection is boring here, Magnus bare beside him. It is not a goal to be achieved. 

“I thought--” You forgot? 

Magnus burns a kiss into the side of his neck, a sweet little purse of lips. Alec’s mind trips to runes. 

“Oh, I know you shadowhunters, always ready for that immediate gratification.” His palm presses against Alec’s groin. He cock is soft, now. Magnus has never touched him soft. 

There’s something familiar about it. Alec likes it. He wants them all over each other when they’re hot and cool. 

“But I like to play the long game.” He says, and Alec has to grin. Because he knew that. Magnus, who puts trip wires in soliloquies. Whose eyes tick from one to another in meetings, before he slides himself in at just the right moment. Demon grace. 

Magnus has him pinned, sure, but Alec has him pegged. 

\---

He tells him, eventually, because there’s only so long two people can play a game. 

He gets jokes, and teasing, and little slips of fingers against shoulders when Alec feels a bit too strange in his own desire. 

He likes Magnus. He likes him a lot. 

Magnus draws it out, and burrows into every sentence Alec gives him, grinning. He is a unique balance of kind and cruel. Alec thinks they can match. 

\---

Magnus’ eyes slip into crescents on a sunny afternoon when there is no shade to hide in. They are sitting in the institute, the table half-full of people who don't matter.

“That man seems familiar.” He nods slightly, a dip of the head. Alec doesn't need to look. He knows it’s ‘muscled-brunette’, because he knows Magnus. But he still does, neck craning. Maybe he has to confirm. Maybe knowing and knowing are two different things. 

Magnus is perched comfortably in his seat. His makeup is a smoke across lids, the black ring left over from a forest fire. He doesn't fit naturally here, at all. But he folds some new found pocket of space around his frame, like a carpenter digs in a knife to scoop out wood. Creation, constantly.

His eyes aren't sweet. There’s a spark there, very real and very clear. It seems to say: if you won't, I’ll find someone who will. 

Alec presses a touch into Magnus’ knee, bruising. He wonders how close a warlock could come to understanding what runes feel like. 

\---

They fuck in a weapons nook, just because they can. Alec forces his hand flat against Magnus’ mouth, and watches as his face goes wide, the eyeliner a circular ‘Oh’. 

If someone asks, Alec could blame Magnus. Everyone at the institute thinks he’ll do anything. A warlock who paints his lips for free. Throws lines out like bait and poses flush against every gender. 

It would be a lie, though, so he won't. This play between them: spun sugar that glitters slightly in a sunny afternoon of boredom and heat. Let’s touch.

They rut together with their pants around their knees in a dark space off the corner of the institute Alec has promised to run with honor. It’s dirty, so Alec treats it that way: grunts into Magnus’ neck and wraps lunging hands around his body. Magnus’ breath is hard and fast, but he never utters another sound. Alec wonders how he practiced. If it was with sex or something else.

He leaves the nook with sweat sucking his shirt onto skin and a present feeling of every place Magnus touched. He glances at Magnus, slow, through the eyelashes, like he’s expecting something that might burn if he sees it directly. 

But it’s just Magnus. He hasn't gained or lost something. His hair falls like lightning over his temple, jagged, and the smoke around one eye has fanned out strangely. 

“What?” 

Alec’s head shakes. He licks a thumb and presses it over the arch of Magnus’ brow. He thinks he’s allowed. 

The fanned smoke morphs back into scorched earth, Alec drawing it out and curving it. Magnus waits, frozen. 

He doesn't know what to say when he’s done, so he doesn't say anything. More than that: Magnus keeps quiet as well. 

For a second. “That was cute.” He says, grin nearly placed. Alec watches the smoke churn, like a game of hide a seek. Magnus was found, so now he’s seeking. 

Alec lets himself be caught. 

“Shut up.” 

Their hands touch.

**Author's Note:**

> Starting from this fic onward, I'm going to being responding to all comments. :)


End file.
